Bones of the Earth

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Praise for the Writing of Michael Swanwick

The Iron Dragon's Daughter

A New York Times Notable Book

“Eerie … extraordinary … Dickens meets Detroit, full of grimy, toiling waifs, dark factories, trolls with boomboxes, and sleek, decadent high elves … Sordid, violent, funny, absurd, angry, by turns, as intense in its pleasures as in its pains … Swanwick takes huge risks here, and reaps big rewards.” —
Locus

“Entertaining reading … Flamboyant … Grotesquely Dickensian.” —
Newsday

In the Drift

“This episodic tale of life, war and survival in post-meltdown Pennsylvania builds a potent new myth from the reality of radioactive waste.” —George R. R. Martin

“Shocking … powerful.” —
Daily News
(New York)

“A powerful and affecting novel … Chilling, believable and uncomfortably close to home.” —
The Evening Sun
(Baltimore)

Bones of the Earth

“
Jurassic Park
set amid the paradox of time travel … I dare anyone to read the first chapter and not keep reading all the way through to the last shocking page.” —James Rollins,
New York Times–
bestselling author of
Subterranean
and
Bone Labyrinth

“Swanwick dramatizes of the world of dinosaurs with great flair and knowledge, even love.
Bones of the Earth
dances on the edge of an abyss.… [An] entertaining and deft performance.” —
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Swanwick proves that sci-fi has plenty of room for wonder and literary values.” —
San Francisco Chronicle

Jack Faust

“
Jack Faust
is madly ambitious and brilliantly executed, recasting the entire history of science in a wholly original version of our culture's central myth of knowledge, power, and sorrow.” —William Gibson

“Superb … Wonderful and relentless … Provocative and evocative.” —
The Washington Post Book World

“Powerful … Marvelous … Consistently surprising.” —
The
New York Times Book Review

Vacuum Flowers

“Slick and highly competent entertainment that starts fast and never slows down.” —
The Washington Post

“Erotic and witty.” —
The New York Times

“Quintessentially cyberpunk … eminently readable and provocative.” —
Daily News
(New York)

Tales of Old Earth

“A stunning collection from one of science fiction's very best writers. Pay in blood, if necessary, but don't miss these stories.” —Nancy Kress

“Michael Swanwick is darkly magnificent.
Tales of Old Earth
is just one brilliant ride after another, a midnight express with a master at the throttle.” —Jack McDevitt

“Swanwick has emerged as one of the country's most respected authors.” —
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Bones of the Earth

Michael Swanwick

This book is dedicated to all good teachers everywhere, most particularly those of the William Levering School and Central High School in Philadelphia, to whom more is owed than can ever be repaid.

1

Predation Event

Washington, D.C.: Cenozoic era. Quaternary period. Holocene epoch. Modern age. 2010 C.E.

If the whole tangled affair could be said to have a beginning at all, it began on that cold, blustery afternoon in late October when the man with the Igloo cooler walked into Richard Leyster's office. His handshake was firm, and he set the cooler casually down on a tabletop between a lime-green inflatable tyrannosaur and a tray of unsorted hadrosaur teeth without asking permission first. His smile was utterly without warmth. He said his name was Griffin and that he had come to offer Leyster a new position.

Leyster laughed and, sitting back on the edge of his desk, put down the man's card without looking at it. “You could hardly have chosen a worse time to make the offer.”

“Oh?” Griffin shifted a stack of AutoCAD boxes from a chair to the floor. His suit was expensive; he tugged at the knees as he sat, to protect the cloth. He had a heavy, inexpressive face. “Why is that?”

“Well, to begin with, the Smithsonian gave me my current position while I was still finishing up my doctorate. That's one hell of an honor, and I'd look pretty damn ungrateful to move on after less than three years service. I realize you're offering more money—”

“I haven't mentioned salary yet.”

“The Smithsonian is acutely aware of what an honor it is to work for them,” Leyster said dryly. “One of our technicians moonlights selling beer at Orioles games. Guess which job pays him more?”

“There are other inducements besides money.”

“Which is precisely why you're wasting your time. I was on a dig this summer in Wyoming where we uncovered a trackway that's just … well, it's the sort of find that comes along once in a lifetime—
if
you're lucky. Whatever you're offering couldn't possibly be worth my walking away from it.”

For a long moment, Griffin said nothing. Swiveling in his chair, he stared out the window. Following his gaze, Leyster saw only the dark sky, the slick orange tiles on the rooftops opposite, the taxis throwing up gray rooster tails behind themselves on Constitution Avenue, the wet leaves clinging to the glass. Then, turning back, Griffin asked, “Could I see?”

“Do you really want to?” Leyster was surprised. Griffin didn't seem the sort to be interested in original research. A bureaucrat, an arranger, an organizer, yes. A politician, possibly. But never a scientist. Griffin hadn't even arranged for this meeting as a scientist would, with the name of a mutual colleague and his professional affiliation held high, but through the administrative apparatus of the Museum. Some apparatchik, he couldn't even remember who, had called and said that somebody had applied pressure to somebody else up the line, and, figuring it was easier to take the meeting than hear out the explanation, he'd said he'd do it.

“I wouldn't ask if I didn't.”

With a mental shrug, Leyster booted up first his computer and then the trackway program, routing the image to a high-density monitor hung on the wall. The image was as detailed as modern technology could make it. He had provided multiple photographs of each track and Ralph Chapman, down the hall, had come up with a 3-D merge-and-justify routine for them. The program began at the far end of the trackway.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Footprints,” Griffin said, “in mud.”

“So they were, once. Which is what makes them so exciting. When you dig up fossil bones, that's the record of a dead animal. But here, this—this was made by
living
animals. They were alive and breathing the day they made these, and for one of them it was a very significant day indeed. Let me walk you through it.”

He held one hand on the trackball, so he could scroll through the program as he talked. “One hundred forty million years ago, an
Apatosaurus
—what used to known as
Brontosaurus
, before the taxon was reattributed—is out for a stroll along the shores of a shallow lake. See how steady the apatosaur's prints are, how placidly it ambles along. It is not yet aware that it's being hunted.”

Griffin gravely folded his hands as Leyster scrolled down the trackway. They were enormous hands, even for a man of his bulk, and strangely expressive.

“Now look at these smaller sets of prints
here
and
here
, coming out of the forest and following along to either side of the apatosaur's prints. These belong to a hunting pair of
Allosaurus fragilis.
Killer dinosaurs twelve meters long, with enormous sharp claws on their hands and feet, and teeth as large as daggers but with a serrated edge. They move more swiftly than their prey, but they're not running yet—they're stalking. Notice how they've already positioned themselves so they can come up on it from either side.

“Here, the apatosaur becomes aware of its danger. Perhaps the wind shifts and it smells the allosaurs. Maybe the creatures scream as they attack. We'll never know. Whatever alerted it left no trace in the fossil record.

“It runs.

“See how the distance between strides increases. And see how back
here
, the same thing happens to the allosaur tracks. They've gone into an all-out sprint. They're charging, much like a lion charges its prey. Only, their prey is as big as a mountain and they themselves are so large and fierce they could eat lions for breakfast.

“Now look, see how there's a little skip here in the one allosaur's tracks, and an identical one here in the other's. They're matching strides with the apatosaur. For the rest of the chase, they're all three running in lockstep. The allosaurs are in position to leap.”